Roche 'lost interest' in bombing

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The terrorist suspect Jack Roche failed in his only attempt to recruit for an Australian al-Qaeda cell before being ordered to abandon the plan by Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, a court was told yesterday. Roche, 50, is on trial in Perth District Court for plotting to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra.

In earlier excerpts of a taped interview he gave to the Australian Federal Police, which were played to the jury, Roche named Bashir as the leader of South-East Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiah, which was blamed for the Bali bombing in 2002.

Bashir, who is facing tough anti-terrorism laws in Indonesia, has denied being the head of JI and also denied any links to terrorism.

During the AFP interview in 2002, Roche said Malaysian JI operative Hambali asked him to go to Afghanistan via Pakistan, to meet a sheik who turned out to be Osama bin Laden.

Roche said that in Afghanistan senior al-Qaeda men directed him to conduct surveillance on possible terrorist targets in Australia, and recruit up to three Muslims for a terrorist cell.

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"I put out some feelers . . . It was a very difficult task . . ." Roche said on the tapes. "The general conclusion was that nobody in Australia was interested at all . . . I basically gave up after the first attempt with somebody."

Roche, who became a JI member in 1996, said he lost interest in his mission and tried to contact ASIO about his trip to Afghanistan when he was summoned to Indonesia by Bashir.

"And he said, 'Well, look, whatever Hambali's asked you to do, just carry on doing that . . . whatever it happens to be'," Roche said. "Whether he knew about it or not I don't know - Abu Bakar Bashir, that is."

But later, after JI's Australian leaders complained about Hambali's interference in their territory, Roche said Bashir contacted him again. "I got a telephone call from Abu Bakar Bashir telling me to just stop whatever I was doing," he said.

Roche said the last time he contacted ASIO "nobody seemed particularly interested in what was going on".

"So, I thought just leave it and . . . I've been in Thornlie . . . and South Perth waiting for somebody to come knocking on my door."